Page 51 of You for Her (The Edge of Retaliation 2)
Tatum exhales. “Yeah, I know.”
I narrow my eyes. “You know?”
“Yeah, known since we started this trip. He might hate me right now, but I know him, and the guys know him. He was getting help from a few of them to find the locations of these men.”
“He doesn’t even know who they are!” I cry.
Tatum glances at Jo quickly, then looks to me and says, “Chase gave me a name. One name. A swap that means Tanner won’t touch him.”
“Wait a second?” I say, confused. “You made contact with Chase, got a name, and all along Tanner has been chasing that person?”
“Yes,” Tatum tells me.
“You’ve been lying to us?” I whisper. “Why am I not surprised?”
Jo looks hurt, and of course she is. Tatum and her have gotten close, I think she has been trying to find the good side in him again, trying to justify the way she feels about him, and now she’s finding out that he’s been lying. Yet again.
“You told us you couldn’t get hold of Chase?” Jo says, her voice strained.
“Look,” Tatum says, exhaling and running a hand down his face. He’s tired. He’s exhausted. But he didn’t need to lie. “Tanner is my best friend, a friend I did a very fuckin’ bad thing to. He deserves his closure, no matter how he goes about getting it. He wanted those men, and I told him I’d help him get them, if he let Chase be. He agreed. I know we lied to you, but I still intend on letting you confront Chase and do what you need to do, I never lied about that.”
I shake my head, angry and let down. Yet again. “I can’t believe I actually thought you guys were on our side again.”
“We are on your side,” Tatum snaps, his voice gruff. “Fuck, in the end, we’re all after the same thing, aren’t we? Justice for Celia? This isn’t about you, Callie. At least, not all of it is. Tanner deserves to be able to defend the thing he loved the most. Don’t you think he fuckin’ deserves that?”
Dammit.
I do.
I really do.
“Yes,” I snap. “Yes, of course I do, but not if it means he’s going to get himself hurt, Tatum. He’s dealing with people that are dangerous, you can’t just mess with them and walk away.”
“They’re not as dangerous as you think, they’re mid-range drug runners. We can deal with them. We’ve dealt with people like them before. You just need to trust him. Know that’s nearly impossible but right now you need to take my word for it.”
“He could get killed,” I whisper.
Tatum’s eyes soften, and he murmurs, “He’s not goin’ to get killed, darlin’. I’ll make sure of it. You have my word.”
I grit my teeth, but I know there is nothing we can do about this. Tanner is going to go after Celia’s rapists, and he has every right to. It’s not my place to tell him he can’t.
“Where is Tanner?” Ethan asks.
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “We had an argument and he disappeared.”
“He’ll come back soon,” Tatum says. “Until then, we should get some rest. We hit the road early tomorrow.”
“Tatum?” I say, when he stands and walks toward the motel rooms.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you, for your honesty.”
He nods, a quick jerk of his head, but I can see the compassion in his eyes at my words.
Then he disappears.
I turn and glance at Jo.
She looks like she’s about to burst out crying.
Things are just getting more and more complicated by the second.
Will it ever stop?
“WHAT’S GOING ON, HONEY?” I ask Jo, sitting cross-legged on the bed next to her.
She’s been silent since we got back to the room. She had a shower, called Patrick, and now she’s just staring at her phone, like she has a million things she wants to say to someone but can’t.
I know who that someone is.
Jo is playing with fire, and I’m scared of how badly she’s going to get burned.
“I’ve made a mess of things,” Jo whispers. “I didn’t realize I cared about him so much until tonight when he confessed that he had been lying, and it hit me like a punch to the gut. It hurt. It hurt because I care about him. It hurt because he matters to me. Callie, what have I done?”
I exhale. I knew this was going to happen. I saw it from the moment those two laid eyes on each other. It’s a dangerous situation, mostly because Jo is married and Patrick isn’t going to make things easy for her. He’s going to make sure she suffers, hard, especially if he finds out there is another man in the picture.
“You haven’t done anything, have you?” I ask her.
“No, I haven’t, but I want to. God, tonight, we were alone and we were talking … I could smell him and I had to fight every urge in my body, I had to force myself away from him. I wanted him so badly I could hardly think.”
